


moments sooner

by leozenith



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Other, SQUARE ENIX GIVE THEM PROPER ARCS PLEASE, after moenbryda, not a ship fic just angst, thancred never got a proper resolution after lahabrea SO, the poor man needs therapy, yda continues her quest to steal all consumables
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 07:37:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11481690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leozenith/pseuds/leozenith
Summary: It is, all things considered, a very quiet evening.It doesn’t feel like it should be.(spoilers for late ARR, moenbryda)





	moments sooner

It is, all things considered, a very quiet evening.

It doesn’t feel like it should be.

Thancred is standing on one of the walls in Revenant's Toll, overlooking the southeast. Nobody else is with him; the guards know they can count on him to tell them of any developments beyond the wall, and knowing what just happened, they'd felt it better to leave him be. He leans on the wall and stares at the sunset.

He hasn't been down for hours, Y'shtola thinks, as she ascends the stairs. He's been up on the wall, pondering and talking to no one. After such an incident, that is probably not a good thing.

She gets to the top, and Thancred doesn't turn his head to see her. Y'shtola knows he's aware of her presence.

“You've been up here for a while.”

Thancred gives only a small “hm” as a reply.

“Usually, when you sulk, you sulk in a corner, at a table. Today is different, I take it?”

“Minfilia hid all the alcohol,” Thancred pouts.

Y'shtola nods ever so slightly. “All your stashes?”

“Yda told her about them.”

“Well, your  _ first _ mistake was telling Yda where you had it.”

“I never told her! She just-  _ knows! _ ” Thancred whines.

“She does have uncanny knowledge when it comes to consumables and their whereabouts, doesn’t she?” Y'shtola muses aloud as she walks over beside her fellow Scion and leans forward on the wall as well. “Perhaps such burglary is a blessing in disguise. Your drinking contest was only a few days back. You’d just have remembered it, and you’d feel worse. Drinking in the same room it happened would have made it worse.”

“I would have come out  _ here _ with it,” Thancred says.

“And gotten drunk in front of the guards and adventurers we’re supposed to be a symbol of hope for?”

Thancred pouts some more, and his shoulders droop a bit as he slumps forward. “Even if it  _ had _ reminded me of her, it wouldn’t have mattered-”

“-once you were drunk enough,” Y'shtola interrupts. “I’m aware. Unluckily for you, we all care too much about you to let you drink yourself to death right before us.”

Thancred bows his head forward, and white locks of hair obscure any view of his face.

“If we had been there a few moments sooner.  _ Moments, _ Y'shtola, and she’d be alive!” His hands ball into fists, and his voice is mournful. “If we had just  _ been there. _ ”

“But we weren’t,” Y'shtola reminds him. “Furthermore, we couldn’t have been. There was no way for the guards to get the alarum out faster than they did. We all teleported back then and there, and it  _ still _ wasn’t fast enough. There was no way for us to have helped her in time.”

Thancred shakes his head slightly. “There had to have been  _ something. _ ”

“Even if there was, it doesn’t help us now to torture ourselves over it. Moenbryda wouldn’t want you to beat yourself up like this.”

“Moenbryda  _ isn’t here, _ ” Thancred retorts forcefully, his back arching slightly. He relaxes slightly almost directly after, and Y'shtola has no time to respond before he says, “...That was uncalled for. I apologize.”

“There is no need,” Y'shtola replies. “We are all overstressed at the moment.”

Thancred sighs. “I apologize nonetheless.”

There's an awkward silence for a few moments as neither make eye contact. Thancred stares off at the waning sunset, and Y'shtola stares at the emerging stars.

Y'shtola closes her eyes and breathes in slowly, then breathes out. “Thancred.”

He doesn't move. “Yes?”

“You can't save everyone.”

Thancred makes a small noise, as if something has caught in his throat, then bows his head. “I can't. But I also can't- I can't  _ accept _ that, Y'shtola. How do I acknowledge that?” He lifts his head up again, and stares at Y'shtola, focusing on the beads on either side of her face, at her bangs, her facial marks, her ears. She notices and says nothing. “How do tell myself there are some souls that will just slip through my grasp? If people slip through my grasp, is the solution not to grasp  _ tighter? _ Is it not to work  _ harder?” _ His slight frown tightens, deepens as he turns to stare at the sun again and finds it lost below the horizon. “Ah, but I  _ did _ grasp tighter, didn’t I? I  _ did _ work harder. And look what that did. Where it got us.”

Y'shtola tilts her head forward, studying the stone wall in front of her. “You know just as well as I do that what happened was not your fault. His actions were not your own.”

“But they were  _ done _ with  _ my body _ .” Thancred points out. “That I was not controlling my hands does not change that they are mine.”

Y'shtola reaches out, both of her hands hovering over his right. He notices and makes eye contact. Y'shtola’s expression is a question, and his nod is an answer. She picks his right hand up, and moves fingers carefully so that they are all folded into a fist except for the index finger. She then puts Thancred's hand at an angle to the stone wall, and softly moves the hand forward and down. His finger touches cooling stone. Y'shtola pulls Thancred's hand back, unfurls his fingers, and places his hand palm-down, flat on the stone that his finger had touched. Y'shtola removes her hands from Thancred's and then returns them to the space in front of her. A moment passes, and Y'shtola asks, “Was that you?”

Thancred looks at her inquisitively. “What?”

“Did you move your hand just now?”

Thancred's eyebrows raise slowly, then quickly furrow and he turns his head downward to stare at his right hand, which he has not moved. “No.”

“You did not move your hand back then, either.”

Thancred lets out a long, ragged sigh, and looks up at the stars. A slight smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. “People like you make it rather difficult for one to wallow in self pity.”

“It’s comforting to know I'm doing my job as your friend,” Y'shtola replies.

Thancred smiles, but after a few moments, his look turns somber. “Y'shtola.”

“Yes, Thancred?”

“There's… a… um, about... Then.” He doesn't make eye contact, skipping around whatever he wants to say.

Y'shtola is patient. “What about then?”

He's silent for a bit longer, and his head bows slightly.

“I was there.”

Y'shtola frowns, and tilts her head slightly. Her lips purse. “What do you mean?”

“The whole time he had me. I was there.”

The stars overhead seem to dim.

Y'shtola breathes in sharply, and her eyes widen. “You were  _ conscious _ .”

He doesn't respond; a response all in itself.

“Gods, Thancred... You never told anyone?”

“I didn't- I didn't want to burden anyone,” he stammers.

“Twelve preserve.” Y'shtola sighs, cupping her face in her hands, rubbing her forehead.

“It was unspeakable. I heard, and I felt, but  _ he _ spoke-- with  _ my voice. _ ” Thancred stares at the stone, growing colder by the second beneath his feet.

Y'shtola sighs. “That’s horrid. I’m so sorry.”

“The worst part,” Thancred stammers out, his voice getting quiet and shaky, “was when I realized he was…  _ becoming me _ .”

Y'shtola opens her mouth to say something comforting, or say something soothing, or say  _ anything _ and finds no words.

“He knew things about me. He knew how to act, what to say, how to  _ stand _ . None of you could tell the difference, and I was  _ infuriated. _ I couldn’t understand how you didn’t know it wasn’t me.”

Y'shtola stares down at the darkening path out of Mor Dhona.

“At some point, I lost hope. I could only watch as this madman walked like me and talked like me. I was waiting for something horrid to happen. I thought he was planning to kill one of you, and every time we were near, I wished I could stop looking. But what he really did was worse. So much worse. I watched as he gave the Scions’ location to the Garleans, and I could do  _ nothing _ .”

The stars twinkle brightly overhead, seemingly unaware of the tragedies they are witness to.

“We were when inside of the Waking Sands when the massacre happened. Robed and masked, hiding in some corner. He waited for the attack to start and just  _ stood there _ . I know why. It was to make me listen. Right after Minfilia yelled, I heard Livia fire, then Lahabrea transported out. Gods, I… I thought Minfilia was dead. I thought you all were.”

Y'shtola nods her head. “You didn’t know they would take prisoners.”

“I thought they were there to kill everyone.” Thancred steps back and sits against the wall behind him, staring at his shoes. “Needless to say, I was overjoyed to hear of your escape, but once you all saw me with the mask off… I thought… I thought you wouldn’t come back.”

Y'shtola snaps her head in Thancred’s direction. “For what reason?”

Thancred shuts his eyes. “The things I’d done.”

“We knew it wasn’t you when he took off the mask.” Y'shtola stares off at the Rising Stones. “We trust you. Even if he hadn’t revealed himself to be Lahabrea posessing you, we would not have believed our eyes. We know that you would not do such things, and we would attempt to free you from whatever dark business you’d been bound to.”

Thancred feels a smile tugging at his lips. “Why is that?”

Y'shtola turns to face him full on. “Because we  _ care _ about you. We would have crossed ten thousand miles or conquered ten thousand foes. We would have gotten you back, because we missed you, and each one of us knew you would do the same for us.”

Thancred smiles a bit, and tries to obsure it by looking at something in the distance. “Just listen to you. You’re going to make me all emotional.”

Y'shtola smiles herself, and stares up at the sky.

“So… what now?” Thancred asks. “What do we do?”

“Exactly what Moenbryda would do,” Y'shtola replies, shrugging her shoulders, and turning on her heel to walk away.

“And what would that be?” Thancred asks after her. She looks back at him. He’s smiling. Good.

“We continue the fight.”

**Author's Note:**

> square enix please give thancred more love and support thanks  
> twitter: @claymorejunkie where i yell abt ffxiv and uh... thats it mostly


End file.
